Bush Opens Way for Counties and States to Claim Wilderness RoadsPolicy could allow vehicles into vast areas of wilderness, some in national
parks. Critics fear harm by miners, off-roaders and others.

By Julie Cart, Times Staff Writer

MOJAVE NATIONAL PRESERVE -- From most perspectives,
this windblown landscape is the definition of off the beaten path. Sandy hummocks give way to flinty mountain ranges and a
seemingly impassable expanse that is home to herds of bighorn sheep, desert tortoises and a universe of heat-loving plants.

But
others see the preserve's 1.6 million acres of creosote bushes and ribbed desert washes and envision thousands of miles of
roads. Ditto for Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks, along with wilderness areas in the Sierra Nevada and along California's
rugged northern coast.

That vision of unfettered motorized access to remote country that has for decades been the province
of wild animals and a few hardy backpacking humans is a lot closer to reality thanks to a Bush administration policy quietly
adopted earlier this month.

Bowing to long-standing pressure from several Western states and counties, the Interior
Department's new policy gives local decision-makers the opportunity to lay claim to tens of thousands of miles of rights of
way across federal land. Ultimately, it will be up to the Interior Department to determine the validity of the claims.

Enacted
through a rules change, the new policy has the potential to open millions of acres of land in national parks and federally
designated wilderness areas to motorized transportation. By providing access to isolated holdings, it could also open remote
country to drilling for oil and gas and other commercial development.

The policy does not automatically convey rights
of way to local jurisdictions. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management must rule on the validity of each claim. The agency is virtually
certain to face legal challenges to any rights of way granted through parks or wilderness areas where motorized transportation
is now prohibited.

Nonetheless, wilderness advocates have cause for alarm. The Bush administration has made its preference
clear for granting state and local authorities increasing say in the way federal lands are used.

Deputy Interior Secretary
Steve Griles recently told a group of Alaska mining and energy executives that the administration would soon approve rights-of-way
claims from that state.

Alaska, Utah and other states, as well as a handful of Southern California counties, are asserting
the rights-of-way claims under a little-known 1866 law titled RS 2477, which was designed to encourage the development of
the rural West. The law was repealed in 1976, but states and counties were still able to make claims if the roads existed
before 1976.

Wagon Trails

In many cases, what authorities are claiming as roads amount to little more
than wagon tracks, livestock paths and even dogsled routes in Alaska. But with muscular, four-wheel-drive vehicles, even the
most primitive routes can allow access to untrammeled places.

The issue heated up during the 1990s as off-road vehicle
enthusiasts, hunters, ranchers and mining and energy interests became increasingly concerned about the Clinton administration's
efforts to curtail road building in national forests, restrict mining near national parks and create parks and monuments.

The
new policy does not take effect until Feb. 5, but already its implications are being felt across the West.

In California,
San Bernardino County has indicated its intent to claim nearly 5,000 miles of rights of way more than twice the total mileage
of maintained roads in the entire county. The county is pressing claims to 2,567 miles of roads within the Mojave National
Preserve, acting at the behest of off-road enthusiasts, ranchers and mining interests.

Riverside and other counties
have documented claims to rights of way in Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks and 21 wilderness areas in the Southern
California desert.

Counties such as San Bernardino say they are simply securing legitimate claims that they may or
may not intend to exercise.

"These are blanket assertions," said Brad Mitzelfelt, chief of staff for San Bernardino
County Supervisor Bill Postmus. "It's a matter of defending local prerogatives and local rights. If you have a once-in-a-lifetime
chance to protect rights that you may lose forever, you've got to take it."

Park and wilderness advocates fear it will
disrupt wildlife habitat, turning 19th century wagon ruts into paved roadways, allowing cars and their pollution into unspoiled
places.

"We're concerned about highways, but in a way that's just the tip of the iceberg," said Heidi McIntosh, conservation
director for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which has been monitoring RS 2477 claims for more than a decade.

McIntosh
said one of the right-of-way claims in Utah leads down a waterfall and another through a 4-foot-wide slot canyon.

"With
roads comes pollution, wildlife fragmentation, off-road vehicles, the loss of solitude and quiet. Multiply that by 10,000,
the number of claims here in Utah, and you have a mess. I can't think of an issue the Bush administration is working on that
can have a longer or more serious impact on public lands."

Impact Assessed

Ten years ago, the National
Park Service evaluated potential RS 2477 claims and found that if the roads were allowed, the impact would be devastating.
The report noted that the claims could cross many miles of undisturbed fish and wildlife habitat, historical and archeological
resources, and sensitive wetlands.

"If a court were to decide that the law says the right-of-way roads have precedence
over legally designated wilderness, that would have a catastrophic effect on wilderness," said David Graber, senior science
advisor at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks and a member of the park service's wilderness steering committee.

The
Clinton administration proposed a rule that would have prevented footpaths, dogsled tracks and other primitive routes from
being turned into roadways but met resistance from Congress, and the issue went unresolved.

Today, Interior officials
say the change is needed to streamline time-consuming disputes and lengthy legal proceedings. The new rule removes public
comment and judicial review from the process and gives the Bureau of Land Management sole authority to validate right-of-way
claims.

Nationally, some of the most celebrated public landscape could be affected. Alaska has asserted claims over
22,000 waterways and 2,700 miles of roads in 13 national parks and preserves, including Denali National Park and the Arctic
National Wildlife Reserve.

In Utah, many of the rights of way crisscross southern Utah's spectacular red rock country
where local officials contend that the cluster of half a dozen national parks and proposed wilderness areas stand in the way
of access to cattle grazing, minerals, and oil and gas deposits.

There and elsewhere, off-road enthusiasts as well
as cattle, mining and ranching groups and hunters have lobbied hard for the rights of way, in some cases filing claims themselves.

"It's
been a long and arduous fight because the previous administration wasn't cooperating. Now, we've found willing ears," said
Clark Collins, executive director of the Blue Ribbon Coalition, a Pocatello, Idaho-based organization representing motorized
recreation interests.

"In rural areas, people are very interested in this issue, it means so much to all of us," said
Ron Schiller, who heads a recreation group in Ridgecrest, Calif., that supports rights-of-way claims. "Up here in the high
desert, this is what we have to recreate. We don't have a lot of miniature golf courses or big theaters or theme parks."

In
the Mojave Preserve, hunters drive abandoned mining roads and hike to get closer to their quarry: bighorn sheep and deer.
For much of the preserve, the old routes weave through low brush and serve to keep visitors from more sensitive desert areas.

The
Blue Ribbon Coalition's California chapter has made three rights-of-way claims, pushing for motorized access across hundreds
of miles of wilderness in Sequoia National Forest, through the King Range National Conservation Area on the north coast and
in non-wilderness tracts in the Six Rivers National Forest.

"We don't want to undo vast sections of wilderness, that's
not our intent. We do intend to protect our access," said Don Amador, the group's Western states representative.

But
access carries implications for altering landscapes. Roads through wilderness create traffic corridors and make adjacent areas
more accessible. Miners or others who own land within federal preserves may decide that new roads will make it economically
feasible to develop their land commercially, or explore for oil and gas.

Implications Feared

"Once Interior
opens the door, it's a free-for-all," said Keith Hammond of the California Wilderness Coalition, whose volunteers are walking
thousands of miles of RS 2477 claims in the state to inventory the condition of the routes.

Mitzelfelt said San Bernardino
County doesn't know which of its current claims would be pressed. With a budget of$30 million for maintaining the county's
existing roads, Mitzelfelt said, he was unsure what the cost would be for new roads or how to pay for them.

Across
the country there is no indication how many claims will be validated, and critics acknowledge their concern, at this point,
is based on the potential for damage.

So far the Interior Department has offered no clear direction on the rule's most
potentially explosive aspect what to do about rights of way that cross the borders of wilderness. Under a federal law, motorized
travel is not allowed in wilderness areas.

"We're wondering how this is going to work out," said BLM spokesman Jeff
Holdren. He said the nitty-gritty details of implementation of the rule change have not been worked out, including how to
deal with right-of-way claims in wilderness areas.

"We didn't expect anyone to want roads in wilderness, but technically
it can be done. I suspect we will be in court pretty soon over such a situation. I'm sure there are a lot of people out there
pulling their hair out."

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